Hank Quense Visits During His Book Tour of Falstaff’s Big Gamble

Award-winning author Hank Quense writes humorous fantasy and sci-fi stories. His motto is fantasy and sci-fi stories told with humor and satire. He has over forty published short stories and a number of nonfiction articles. On occasion, he also writes an article on fiction writing or book marketing but says that writing nonfiction is like work while writing fiction is fun. He refuses to write serious genre fiction saying there is enough of that on the front page of any daily newspaper and on the evening TV news. Hank lives in Bergenfield, NJ with his wife Pat. They have two daughters and five grandchildren.

Hank’s previous works include Zaftan Enterprises, Zaftan Miscreants and Tales From Gundarland, a collection of fantasy stories. Readers Favorite awarded the book a medal and EPIC designated it a finalist in its 2011 competition. His Fool’s Gold is a retelling of the ancient Rhinegold myth and Tunnel Vision is a collection of twenty previously published short stories. Build a Better Story is a book of advice for fiction writers.

He has a number of links where you can follow his work and his occasional rants:

I love writing spoofs of Shakespeare’s plays as well as rewriting legends and myths. For a long time, I wanted to do two more plays, Othello and Hamlet, as separate short stories. For several years I couldn’t get anything to click with these two stories. One day, I decided to lump them together. That didn’t work either because there was nothing to connect the two stories; they were independent of each other. In desperation, I added Falstaff into the mix and within thirty seconds, I had conceived the entire plot of the novel. I had the plot endings, I had the character interactions, I had entire thing scoped out. It took me another three months to develop the characters, flesh out the plot lines, establish the setting and build the scenes. After that I began the first draft and here we are.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about what it’s about?

Hamlet is a crown prince whose father dies and his uncle usurps his throne and marries his mother. His father’s ghost demands retribution fir his murder. Othello, thanks to a tarted-up resume, has a job which is way beyond his competence. Both of them run afoul of Falstaff, a rogue on the hunt for naive victims and both Hamlet and Othello fill the bill

Q: How did you come up with the title?

As I was writing it, Falstaff takes some big chances that could be fatal to him, so the title just fit the story.

I took two of his greatest tragedies and three of his most famous characters and changed them to the point that Shakespeare wouldn’t recognize them. Hamlet is now a dwarf, Othello a dark elf while Falstaff remains an overweight human. Actually, I think Shakespeare would approve of my Falstaff character.

Q: How did you come to write sci-fi/fantasy with satire?

I liked inventing fantasy and scifi characters. I’m also quite cynical, so satiric scifi/fantasy seems like a pretty natural thing to do.

Q: Now that Falstaff’s Big Gamble has been published, do you have another book in the wings?

I’m having trouble picking which one to write. I have a novella and three novels I want to write and I have most of the story design work done. Now it’s a matter of finding time to write them all. And then there is the matter of the new abilities coming out: to write books with embedded media like audio and video tracks. So much to do, so little time.

Q: Would you like to tell our readers anything else about you, your goals or upcoming appearances?

My main goal is to stop being famously unknown.

About Falstaff’s Big Gamble

This novel is Shakespeare’s Worst Nightmare.
It takes two of the Bard’s most famous plays, Hamlet and Othello, and recasts them in Gundarland. There, Hamlet becomes a dwarf and Othello a dark elf and Iago and his wife, Emilia, are trolls.
If that isn’t bad enough, these two tragedies are now comedies with Falstaff, Shakespeare’s most popular rogue, thrown in as a bonus.
Both Hamlet and Othello are plagued by the scheming Falstaff, who embezzles money from Othello. After Hamlet becomes king (with help from Falstaff) the rogue becomes the dark nemesis behind throne.

Hank Quense has written about the Strange Worlds that he has developed as a background to many of the books he has written. One of these worlds is called Gundarland, a planet inhabited by humans and fantasy creatures. The second is Zaftan 31B, home world of the alien race known as Zaftans. The books contain information on culture, races, religion, politics and other topics. His latest book in this series is Zaftan Enterprises.